Fife was a magnet for pilgrims, says archaeologist Douglas Speirs

Think of pilgrimage and thoughts of Jerusalem, Rome or maybe Lourdes spring to mind, but not Fife. And yet, throughout the medieval period, the cathedral church of St Andrews was regarded as one of the most important shrines in western Christendom. Indeed, Fife was regarded as a veritable pilgrim’s kingdom and possessed many regionally and nationally important pilgrimage sites.

Shrines dedicated to St Monan and to St Ethernan, to St Fillan and even to St Columba drew pilgrims from across the country whilst the relics of St Andrew and the shrine to St Margaret at Dufermline ensured that Fife’s fame as an international pilgrimage destination was known the length and breadth of medieval Europe.

Heaven, Hell and the Afterlife
The idea of heaven and hell and the final resting place of one’s soul pre-occupied the thoughts of every strata of medieval society. Indeed, to the medieval mind, it was universally believed that man was born sinful and that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven he had not only to undo the sin he was born with, but he had also to avoid bringing any more new sin upon himself. This was a tall order but pilgrimage offered a chance of beating the odds because pilgrimage, so long as it was undertaken in a spirit of true devotion, could wipe away sin.

Fortunately, its benefits could also be calculated with a high degree of accuracy as most shrines offered a graduated scale of indulgence. Put simply, the medieval mind held that upon death, the soul experienced a process of purification or temporary scourging and punishment through which it was made clean and ready for heaven. This process was known as purgatory and the concept was often made all the more real by the thought of purgatory as an actual, if somewhat abstract, place where souls were punished for sins committed in life. The indulgence, the reward for pilgrimage, gave a specified number of days remission from the soul’s time in purgatory. Thus, if you could make the journey, you could buy back soul-processing time and speed up your entry to heaven. Indeed, even those destined for hell could be brought back from the brink by the power of pilgrimage. There were benefits for the living too. Ill health might be cured by pilgrimage, favour and fortune might be increased, barren women might fall pregnant and of course every pilgrim enjoyed considerable respect within their community for their piety and devotion.

The Cult of Saints
Praying and attending mass at church was all well and good, but it wasn’t always enough. Pilgrimage on the other hand offered a clear cut path to improve one’s lot in both this life and in the next. Salvation was at hand, but to achieve it, you needed the help of saints. This was because the saints acted as direct conduits to God. Acting as intermediaries and by offering a means of divine intercession, prayers made at the shrine of a saint would be carried all the more speedily to God. It therefore followed that for best results, you needed to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of the most influential saint you could find.

There were of course countless shrines to countless saints across medieval Europe. Some were of mere local significance and offered only little spiritual reward; some were of regional importance and offered more reward; some were of national importance and offered a real return on the investment in getting there and then there were those top notch, internationally important shrines that drew pilgrims from across Christendom. Jerusalem and Rome were of course the ultimate destinations but just below them were those places that offered the chance to call upon the power of the holiest of Christianity’s saints: the Apostles.

There were only two places in western Europe that offered the chance to visit the shrine of an apostle: Compostella in Spain, which housed the relics of St James, and St Andrews in Fife, where from at least the 10th century if not before, the relics of St Andrew, the first-chosen apostle and brother of St Peter, had been venerated and visited by pilgrims from across Europe.

It’s hard to under play the importance of St Andrews as a medieval centre of pilgrimage. The size and success of the cathedral was based almost entirely on the prestige and income that the relics of St Andrew generated. Even the physical architecture of the town was influenced by the shrine, and it’s no coincidence that North Street, South Street and Market Street all converge on the cathedral and the shrine of St Andrew. St Andrews was a pilgrimage town, its cathedral was the largest building in medieval Scotland, bigger even than its main European rival, the cathedral Santiago de Compostela. It was a major western European religious centre, a deeply holy place and everything from the name of the town to its architecture shouted this fact out.

By the later 13th century, Dunfermline too could boast a pilgrimage shrine which if it didn’t quite rival St Andrews, it was not far behind. Dunfermline’s shrine, at the east end of the abbey church, was of course to St Margaret. She had been in life a displaced princess of the old Saxon royal line who became queen to King Malcolm Canmore upon their marriage in 1070. As Queen, she was largely responsible for reforming the Scottish Church, for founding Dunfermline Abbey and of course for introducing the order of Benedictine monks to Scotland.

Renowned for her personal piety and humility it is perhaps not surprising that after her death in 1093, Queen Margaret’s memory did not die. Indeed if anything, it mushroomed and within only a few decades of her death she was being revered locally as a saint - a claim furthered by both her son, King David I and by her grandsons, King Malcolm the Maiden and King William the Lion. The abbey chapter too, motivated by its genuine devotion to their patron and no doubt by a clear understanding of the prestige and wealth that a successful shrine would bring, were similarly not slow to champion the saintliness of Queen Margaret and in 1244 they petitioned the pope for her canonization. An enquiry was duly ordered by Pope Innocent IV in 1245 and in October, 1249, her de facto status as a local saint was confirmed by her official canonization. ‘… let pious pilgrims on their sacred journey to the shrine of Christ’s first chosen Apostle, St Andrew, find sanctuary and comfort at your shrine in Dunfermline’ read part of the pope’s oration, indicating that at first the shrine of St Margaret was considered, like many other local saints’ shrines in Fife, as a detour en route to the real reason for going on pilgrimage to Fife: to visit the shrine of Saint Andrew. But this was to change over time and miraculous events were reported in June, 1250, when the Queen’s old tomb was opened up and her saintly remains were translated to their newly built relic chapel. Indeed, as the cult of St Margaret grew, her shrine soon became known on the Continent and quickly became Scotland’s second most important pilgrimage site, offering a highly attractive one year and forty days indulgence (time off in purgatory) for all pilgrims visiting the shrine on the saint’s feast day, November 16th.

A Journey of Salvation
Pilgrimage was then an arduous journey of spiritual purification. It was an act of ritual cleansing that had to be acted out in a very precise manner. A pilgrim had to be penitent, focused and of pure thought. They dressed in a specific manner wearing a heavy cloak and a wide-brimmed hat usually adorned with pilgrim badges. They carried a leather satchel known as a scip along with a wooden staff with a water carrier attached. The journey was difficult, it involved hardship and it could even be perilous. This was important. The journey allowed the pilgrim to spend time in the presence of God, to reflect and to be penitent. It was a physical from of extended prayer and the longer and harder the journey, the greater the spiritual reward. Hence, pilgrim routes grew up. Indeed, long before any kind of centralised authority thought of creating transport networks or roads for the good of the people, the Church was financing the construction of dedicated pilgrim routes complete with ferries, bridges, hospitals and hostels.

Of course, pilgrimage was big business. Pilgrims needed accommodation, food, transport, horses and supplies. They used local facilities. They bought souvenirs and in a state of heightened piety they gave generously to the Church. Indeed, it was this that both encouraged and enabled the Church to invest in the transport infrastructure that created the pilgrim routes. Both Earlsferry and Queensferry started life as ferry crossings endowed for the free use of pilgrims, whilst the first major bridge in Fife, that over the River Eden at Guardbridge was actually consturcted in 1419 by Bishop Wardlaw to make life easier for pilgrims en route to St Andrews – this huge capital undertaking was probably prompted after the drowning of a party of eminent pilgrim monks the year before.

End of the Road
So what happened to all the pilgrims and where are the shrines now? The simple answer is the Reformation. In 1560, after more than half a century of growing public opposition to the old order, the Scottish Reformation Parliament announced the nation’s formal break with Rome and the Catholic Church. The authority of Rome was repudiated; Catholic traditions were outlawed and a new Reformed Protestant Church of Scotland, organised along Presbyterian lines was adopted as the nation’s new official religion. In truth, public disenchantment with the Church and its perceived corruption had resulted in a steady decline in the popularity of pilgrimage throughout the 15th century and by the beginning of the 16th century the numbers of pilgrims coming to even the great shrines of St Andrew and St Margaret were down to a mere trickle. In 1512, St Leonard’s Hospital in St Andrews, originally established as a hostelry for pilgrims to the shrine of Saint Andrew, was converted into a college of the university, the foundation charter of the new college clearly stating ‘… the Christian Faith, firmly rooted in this land, no longer needs such support’, ie the hospital or hostelry was no longer needed as the Christian faithful no longer came to visit the shrine on pilgrimage.

Of course, the Church tried desperately to reform its fortunes and to re-kindle the lucrative pilgrimage industry, but no matter how intently it sought out its critics and no matter how cruelly it burned and punished those reformers it branded as heretics, it couldn’t stop the teachings of Erasmus, Luther and Calvin from spilling into the country. By the 1530s it was clear that Church reform was inevitable and the old regime’s attempts to fight it simply meant that when change finally did come, it wasn’t peaceful. Indeed, upon the official adoption of the Protestant faith by Parliament in 1560, the Scottish people, particularly those in the towns, vented their anger on the old Catholic order and the nation’s great shrines were ransacked, looted and cast down. Thus in almost an instant, centuries of a tradition of pilgrimage in Fife and across Scotland came abruptly to an end. Indeed, so violent was the turmoil of change that saw the shrines cast down, almost nothing of their original form or splendour now survives. Almost everything, down to the last statue, painting, reliquary and crucifix was smashed, looted or discarded. Even the buildings themselves, including the great cathedral of St Andrews itself, was cast down and despoiled. In only a few months in 1560, a combination of religious zeal and opportunistic rioting and theft wiped away centuries of tradition and deprived us of what would undoubtedly have been a great medieval inheritance.